A brand is the sum total of perceptions, impressions, and feelings about your organization. It is not a thing, but a relationship…a shared affinity forged with your audience. 

To thrive in a fiercely competitive marketplace, you must treat your organization’s brand identity as a strategic asset that transcends mere attributes. Working on an emotional and experiential level, your brand is the most powerful weapon available to you for building and inspiring loyalty.

Think of a brand as your organization’s universal pulse or hum. It needs to be amplified for the signal to become stronger and clearer — ultimately aiding in your audience’s reception, retention, and comprehension. 

Since a brand is more essence than object, it is not easily quantifiable. It has an emotional center that reflects your organization’s traits and values as well as your audience’s hopes and desires. The objective of a brand is to imprint itself on those who experience it and, in so doing, make a lasting impression.

When to Rebrand

You don’t have to be a brandthropologist to know you’re going through a brand meltdown.   

The signs and symptoms are obvious: increasing customer erosion, employee malaise, and competitive confusion. By and large, it indicates your brand message may be muddled, your brand position weak, and your brand promise falling on deaf ears. 

When your brand is off-kilter or out of touch, it’s time to rebrand, or, in other words, rekindle your values, reclaim your position, and reassert your promise. If your stakeholders are experiencing less and less satisfaction from your brand, then bring back its luster with clarity and conviction.

Whatever you do, don’t throw out your brand with the bath water. Or try to reinvent the wheel. Simply revive, refresh, and revitalize…and make your old brand new again. 

Deconstructing Your Brand  

To establish an enduring connection with an audience, your branding efforts should focus on modifying and amplifying the brand experience. To help guide that experience, we focus on those key components of your identity that your stakeholders may find unclear, untenable, or uninviting.  

Brand Message

The brand message enables you to align your brand to an intended audience with whom you would like to forge a relationship. It should present a distinct point of view. It is the glue that cements all of the other brand components together. Think of the brand message as a way to inspire and unify your stakeholders by giving them a common purpose, a raison d’etre, a battle cry to rally around.     

Brand Position

The brand position is the relative value or meaning that your brand has vis-à-vis other brands in the minds of consumers. Since you can’t occupy the same position held by a competitor, you need to lay claim to something separate or unique. In other words, you need to take ownership of a key attribute or quality that people admire and desire, and one that sharply differentiates you from the rest of the pack. Since perception is the sine qua non of branding, we help you focus on the compelling concept, word, phrase, and/or image that can powerfully elevate and strengthen your brand position.            

Brand Promise

The brand promise cuts to the core of what your brand is all about, translating a customer need into a tangible reality. Working on a tacit level, your promise is the underlying lynchpin of your message, an influential device that can move the human heart. A brand promise goes beyond the mere delivery of a benefit, the solution of a problem, or the desire of an outcome; rather, it represents the fulfillment of a deeply-rooted wish. Your brand should promise a satisfying and gratifying experience to which your customers aspire.